


Go Tell the Bees

by octoberburns



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bees, Gen, Magical Realism, Witchcraft, Women Protecting Women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 02:23:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octoberburns/pseuds/octoberburns
Summary: Summer has a beehive. The bees have a problem. And Warning is living up to his name, which really should come as no surprise, considering he's a cat.





	Go Tell the Bees

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [As the Crow Flies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14353038) by [octoberburns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/octoberburns/pseuds/octoberburns). 

> My August story request. Thanks to Ashley, Alex, and my other supporters for making this possible, and special shoutout to my dear Jadis for putting this suggestion in every month until it won.
> 
> This month's prompt was for an exploration of the "real magic" of cats and bees, as distinct from the "mischief" of crows. It's set in the same world as As the Crow Flies, but it's not connected to that story in any way, so you can read them in any order.

“The bees are upset about something,” said Warning from his perch on the living room windowsill.

Summer was preoccupied with wrestling her biology textbook into her backpack, and didn’t look up immediately. She could see Warning’s tail lashing back and forth out of the corner of her eye, though the rest of his body was still. “Any idea what about?” she said. No need to ask if he was sure—his ears were much better than hers, and the beehive was only one floor up.

Warning made a dismissive noise. “I don’t speak bee,” he said, his voice touched with the hint of fond scorn he got whenever she asked a particularly human question. “But something’s bothering them. I’d bet my whiskers on it.”

Finished with the book, Summer slung her pastel pink backpack—it matched her hair!—over one shoulder and came to join her cat at the window. She lifted the screen and stuck her head outside, ears straining for the familiar drone of her beehive, but try as she might she couldn’t determine anything unusual from its hum.

“Well, it’s not the weather,” she said. “I know what they sound like when a storm’s incoming, and anyway it’s supposed to be clear today.” She glanced down at Warning. “I don’t have time to check on them before class. Keep an ear out for me?”

Warning—or, more properly, A Warning of the Coming Winter Storm Arriving on the Eve of Autumn’s Close—was an utterly ordinary-looking brown tabby; he had also been Summer’s familiar for the last three years. A normal cat might well have refused her just to make a point, but as far as he was concerned, they were a team. He chirped agreement. “I’ll let you know if something goes wrong. Go to class, Summer.”

She kissed the top of his furry head. “Yes, mother.”

Because he liked her, he waited until she was closing the door to start washing his face.

Summer locked her apartment and took the stairs down two at a time, hitting the exterior door with a spring in her step and throwing it open—and, accordingly, careening unexpectedly into someone who had been hovering on the doorstep just outside it.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” she said, untangling herself from the stranger. “My bad. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, no worries,” he said. He flashed her a grin and reached for the edge of the door.

He was about her age, which in this neighbourhood probably meant “student,” and handsome enough as guys went—nice smile, tanned skin, chestnut hair. Summer didn’t recognize him. She kicked the door shut behind her.

“Sorry,” she said, and gave him her best dimples—which were frankly wasted on men. “We’re not supposed to let people into the building if we don’t know them. Were you waiting for someone?”

He looked briefly taken aback, but recovered quickly. “Yeah, actually. Amélie? She still lives in number four, right?”

That was across the hall from Summer on the second floor. She had seen her neighbour that morning, but something now compelled her to say, “I don’t know, sorry. But if you give her a call she’d be able to let you up.” The expression he settled into at that was dissatisfied, but she preempted him with another apology. “Sorry, I need to go. I have class.”

“Alright,” he said, stepping out of her way. “Let me know if you see her, yeah?”

“Sure,” she said, with an insincerity that she knew would come across as distraction, and then jogged off down the sidewalk towards campus.

It was still early in the semester. Summer was in third year, but even her classes hadn’t had time to get too intense yet. She took notes on the day’s lecture—botanical responses to flood conditions—picked up her latest lab assignment from the TA, and accompanied the professor to his office hours to discuss the upcoming midterm. By the time she was done with school responsibilities it had been nearly two and a half hours since she’d left the house. Normally she’d have stayed on campus for a while longer—she could always get some work done in the library, or meet up with friends to study over dinner—but she had gone quite long enough without checking up on the bees. She went home.

There was no sign of the guy she’d bumped into, but she did run into her across-the-hall neighbour on her way up the stairs. “Oh, hey! Amélie, right?” she said. “Did your friend get in touch with you?”

Amélie was hauling groceries into her apartment. She turned, the bag still in her arms, a faint crease of a frown marring her brow. “My friend?”

“Maybe he wasn’t,” Summer said. “There was a guy looking for you when I left earlier. I thought you might have been expecting him.”

Amélie’s pause was barely noticeable, but Summer was familiar enough with the instinctive responses of her animal colleagues to recognize a freeze when she saw one. _Good thing I didn’t let him in_, she thought viciously, as Amélie said, “What did he look like?”

“Brown hair, tanned, about yea high,” Summer said, waving her hand somewhere in the vicinity of half a foot above her head. “I guess he was cute for a guy. Probably. I don’t know what’s cute on men. I didn’t get his name.”

The spooked expression on Amélie’s face was only a momentary flash, there and gone, and she had mastered herself entirely before she spoke again. “Thanks for letting me know,” she said. “He’s not my friend. You shouldn’t let him in if you see him again.”

“You got it,” Summer said. “Sorry, I’ve got a thing, I need to check on something—”

“Yeah, no problem,” Amélie said, giving her a quick smile before she turned back to her groceries. “I’ll see you later.”

“Later!” Summer called, already shoving her keys into the lock and shouldering her door open.

Warning was still sitting in his usual perch on the windowsill when she came in, but his ears perked up at the sound of the door. He leapt down as Summer dumped her backpack on the floor, trotting over to her with his tail held high.

“No change,” he said. “Nothing’s happened, but they haven’t relaxed, either.”

Summer made a face. “That’s what I figured. Want to come up to the roof with me?”

“Someone’s got to keep an eye on you,” Warning said.

She held out her arms, and he jumped up into them, clambering into his accustomed place on her shoulder. As soon as he was balanced, Summer crossed the room to the door that led onto her tiny balcony. Skirting the little glass table and folding chairs she had set out there, she stepped over the railing onto the fire escape and hauled herself up the stairs with practiced movements.

The building Summer lived in had originally been built as a family home, but sometime in the seventies the owners had renovated it into four small apartments: one on the main floor with two bedrooms and a proper living room, one studio apartment in the extension, and two little one-bedroom units on the second floor. It was quirky and charming, and Summer liked it on its own merits, but far more important to her—and the reason she had prioritized it over any other options—was the rooftop patio.

She was pretty sure the landlord had intended it for barbecues and parties, to make up for how most of the backyard was parking lot. Instead, the tenants had turned it into a communal garden. Summer had the box in the back corner, closest to the fire escape; she had filled it with aromatic and medicinal herbs, which she put in spell bags, a vine of squash, which she put in soups, and garlic and onions, which she put in everything. The rest was wildflowers; that was for the bees. Their hive sat at the end of her garden box, under the sheltered overhang created by the now largely-ornamental chimney. She and her mother had installed the bees—with utmost care—when she’d moved in last year; the other tenants had been hesitant at first, but had warmed up to them when they saw how well their vegetables were doing at harvest time. Gifts of fresh honeycomb and beeswax candles hadn’t hurt either.

Up close, the agitated hum of the bees was fully apparent. Summer let Warning down as she approached the hive, and he prowled off to make a circuit of the patio, infected by the bees’ restlessness. She took her long gloves and netting hat out of the outdoor storage trunk she kept next to her garden plot, pulling them methodically on. She’d had a full suit when she had first started working with bees, but time, familiarity, and the privileges of being a witch meant that wasn’t necessary anymore; the gloves and hat now were the last vestiges of precaution.

Nothing was obviously wrong with the hive when she eased it open, but Summer went through the familiar motions of checking it over anyway, hoping it might help to soothe the bees. They knew her, in both the regular non-magical way that any hive knew its keeper, and in the intuitive way bees aligned themselves with a trusted witch; there was a sort of ritual to this that was older than the written word. She didn’t have much to update them on, but that didn’t matter; she had been telling the bees everything since she was a child.

“Hello, dear ones,” she said, her voice low and melodic. “I know it hasn’t been long since I talked to you last. I don’t have much news.” The autumn reserves of honey were starting to build up; she’d have to get a few more empty jars soon to deal with that. “I got my latest lab back today. Eight out of ten, which isn’t bad. I’m going to try to get the next one up to a nine.”

As she spoke, the bees buzzing around her fingers began to align themselves with her movements; before long, she had a little cloud of them following her motions, trailing after her hands or winding around her fingertips or alighting on her covered knuckles. But still she could hear the uneasy pulse in the hive’s drone. Whatever was wrong, it couldn’t be soothed by the regular ritual of beekeeping. She was going to have to talk to them for real.

Summer settled her thoughts. Unlike cats, and the other animals like them, bees couldn’t communicate with magical humans directly: their minds were too different. Instead, a trained witch could speak to them by making signs with her hands that mimicked their dances, and could discern the bees’ response by interpreting their answering patterns. Now she took half a step back and removed her gloves, winding her hands together gracefully in the oldest pattern she knew.

_Share—trouble/danger—friend—assist._

The bees were slow to respond, their anxiety vibrating through them at too disjointed a pitch. Patiently, Summer repeated it. A second time. A third.

By the fourth the bees were a billowing cloud around her hands.

By the fifth they had begun to dance.

Frowning intently, Summer tracked their movements. She still had a pen in her pocket; now she pulled it out, scribbling notes on her arms between the freckles. The bees repeated their pattern, and she made some corrections. When they started it over again, she looked down at what she had written.

_Hive, human—trouble/danger—predator—defensive swarm—solve._

“I know that look,” Warning said, somewhere off to her left. Summer looked up. He was sitting on the edge of one of her neighbours’ garden boxes, well out of the way of the circling bees, and he was tense from nose to tailtip. “That means bad news.”

“The bees say there’s a threat to the house,” Summer said. “They want me to drive it off.”

“Do you think they’re right?”

She bit her lip. “There was a guy earlier… yeah, I think they might be onto something.”

“Well then,” Warning said, his tail lashing, “I guess we’d better go looking.”

Summer threw her hat and gloves back in the box and scooped him up on her way to the fire escape. “You haven’t noticed anything, have you?”

“No,” the cat said, bracing himself on her shoulder as she started down the stairs. “But I’m not as focused on the home as the bees. I pay attention to _you_.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “And I guess I’ve been fine.”

Rather than ducking back into her own apartment, Summer took the fire escape the rest of the way down, landing on her feet in the back parking lot. There was a proper staircase inside that went down from the roof through the attic, but if there was a threat to the house she wanted to meet it head-on.

The only problem was, she couldn’t find it.

Releasing Warning to go stalk the property’s boundaries, she headed for the front yard. She checked the mailboxes, the hedges, the trash collection around the side—silence. The street was quiet, and nothing seemed out of place. She couldn’t see anything wrong.

Warning rejoined her after twenty minutes, only shaking his head before she even had the chance to ask. “Are you sure the bees said it was a threat?”

Summer nodded. “Not just a threat. They said ‘predator.’ And they’ve never been wrong before.”

Warning’s tail flicked, and he trotted over to wind around her ankles as she unlocked the front door. “Maybe we just need to keep an eye out,” he said. “Be ready if it comes back.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said with a sigh, starting up the stairs. “I just wish they wouldn’t scare me like that.”

She was halfway to the second floor before she realized the sounds of conversation from the landing weren’t what they should have been.

“Don’t be like that, Amélie!” a male voice was pleading. That was definitely the guy Summer had run into earlier. “Just open the door. We can talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk, Nick!” came Amélie’s voice, muffled through her apartment door. “Just go away.”

“Come on,” Nick said, his voice a picture of weary patience. “You’re being really unreasonable about this!”

“Go get the bees,” Summer said in an undertone.

“Right,” said Warning, and tore back down the stairs.

Bracing herself, Summer started up the steps again. “Hey there,” she called, her voice bright and casual. “You’re not supposed to be in here on your own.”

The guy—Nick—whirled around, his guilty expression morphing into a smile when he recognized her. “Oh, hey. I’m just here to see Amélie.”

“No you’re not!” Amélie yelled through the door.

Summer gave her lips a skeptical twist, shifting her gaze significantly from the closed apartment door to Nick’s face. “It doesn’t sound like she wants to see you,” she said. “You should just leave her alone.”

“I’m not leaving,” Nick said. He was still smiling, but there was a brittle edge to it.

“Come on, man,” Summer cajoled. “This doesn’t have to get messy. Just get out of here.”

Nick sneered. “Or what? You’re gonna call the police? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Technically you’re trespassing,” Summer said, her voice still perfectly friendly. “Amélie didn’t let you in. I definitely didn’t. You need to get out of here before you do something you’ll regret.”

“I’m not going to regret anything,” Nick snapped. ”Amélie’s my girlfriend. I’m allowed to come see her.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Amélie said. There was the rattle of a lock, and before Summer could tell her to stay inside, the other girl had shoved the door open, her arms folded across her chest, her hair a haphazard tumble, her glare fixed on Nick. “We went on _one_ date. One! We’re not together, I’m not your girlfriend, and I don’t want to see you! Now get out of here, or I _will_ call the police and tell them you’ve been stalking me.”

Nick’s expression twisted into something ugly then, and he almost lunged for Amélie. But what he would have done next, Summer never found out—because at that point there was a clatter at the hall window, and then the screen slammed open and Warning tumbled into the building, trailing an entire swarm behind him.

“I brought the bees,” he said helpfully, while the other two humans stared in dumb shock at a yowling brown tabby surrounded by half a hive’s worth of honeybees.

Summer wasted no time. As the swarm poured into the landing and expanded to fill the space, she thrust her hands into the centre of the cloud and swirled them in a pattern that signalled her desire to direct their movements. The bees responded eagerly: this was exactly the sort of magic the bond between a witch and her hives existed for.

Channelled correctly, the bees’ pattern dances were far more than just communication—they were power.

Nick was still gaping at her when she slammed him back with sheer physical force. “I told you this didn’t have to get messy,” she said. “I never said anything about the police.”

The bees whirled around her, a dizzying coordinated dance too complex for the human eye to follow. Nick stumbled, and Summer pressed again, pushing him back towards the stairs. His expression was shifting from astonishment to anger as he fought back against her strength of will, and he took a struggling step forward, shouldering through her power like he’d battle the press of a crowd. Grimly, Summer hooked her pinkie in a new gesture; the bees followed her direction, like the best orchestra responding to its conductor. The power altered its flow; Nick staggered back again. Then he hit the stairs. His anger changed to fear, and his fight went from pushing back against her to simply trying to stay on his feet as she pressed him inexorably back down the steps.

Warning had leapt onto the railing and was staring down after Nick, the green of his eyes unnaturally luminous as he lent his low warbling drone to the persistent buzz of the bees. When Nick hit the ground floor and crashed sideways into the front door, Summer released the bees from her guidance and stepped up next to her cat, burying her fingers in the scruff of his neck and joining her power to his.

“Don’t come back,” she said. “You’ll regret it if you do.”

Warning gave a satisfied little yowl, the poisonous green of his gaze bearing down on the young man as he flexed his claws. Nick went white under his golden tan, heaved a gasp—and was gone. Warning’s eyes faded back to normal, and he turned to clamber into Summer’s arms, purring ferociously.

“Holy shit,” said Amélie.

Summer turned back into the landing. Amélie was still standing in her apartment doorway, the cloud of bees in front of her now buzzing amiably as they explored this new environment. The other girl was wide-eyed, looking moments from collapsing to her knees. Summer grinned sheepishly.

“Uh, hey,” she said. “So I guess that was a little dramatic.”

Amélie let out a strangled laugh. “Just a bit,” she said. “I had no idea you did magic.”

“All beekeepers do magic,” Summer said, turning her attention onto the bees. Some of them had found their way back out the open window, and would make their own way back to the hive; the rest would have to be collected and led home. “Even the ones who aren’t witches. I am, though.”

“Yeah. Shit. I’ll say,” said Amélie. “What did you do to him? At the end, I mean?”

“That was Warning, mostly,” Summer said, shifting her arms demonstratively to indicate the smug cat she was still holding. “Cat things. I just helped. Warning, Amélie. Amélie, this is my familiar, A Warning of the Coming Winter Storm Arriving on the Eve of Autumn’s Close. I’m afraid you’ll have to call him by his full name until he tells you otherwise. He’s very insistent about that.”

“I—I see,” Amélie said, still a little wide-eyed as she addressed the cat. “Well, thank you, for whatever it was you did.”

Warning peered at her. “I like her,” he said. “She’s very polite. You can tell her, Summer.”

Biting back a smile, Summer said, “He put a curse on him. If he tries to come back to bother you again he’s going to get violently sick until he leaves.”

“Oh,” Amélie said. She pressed a hand over her mouth, but not before Summer saw the grin she was unable to contain, and felt a warm bubble of self-satisfaction swell up in her chest at the sight. “Oh my god. That’s awful.”

Summer smirked. “I know, right?”

For a moment the only sound in the landing was the drone of the bees, and then they both started laughing.

“Okay,” Summer said finally when she had got herself under control, “I need to gather up the bees. They can’t exactly stay here.”

“No, I guess not,” Amélie said, looking around at the still-substantial swarm happily crawling all over the landing and meandering through the air. “They’re pretty cute, though.”

“Compliment a girl’s bees. The best way to her heart,” Summer said.

“Put them back in the hive, _then_ you can flirt,” Warning said from her shoulder.

Once again Summer had cause to be thankful other people couldn’t understand her cat. But still— “Good idea,” she told him. She unlocked the door to her apartment and put him down, straightening up to face Amélie again. “Want to come over for dinner? We haven’t really talked much, and that seems… well, kind of silly now.”

“Humans,” she heard Warning scoff fondly, as he trotted back into the apartment.

Amélie was still smiling back at her. “I’d love that. I can bring some stuff over to cook, if you like. I was going to make lasagne.”

Summer beamed. “Sounds perfect. I’ll be about fifteen minutes, make yourself at home. Oh, and let me know if there are any bees stuck in your place,” she called after Amélie as she disappeared back into her apartment for ingredients.

“You’ll be the first to know!” she yelled back.

Summer laughed, and began gathering up her hive.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/october_burns). I have a [blog](https://octoberburns.wordpress.com/). Come chat writing and book recs with me! And if you like my stories, I'd love it if you'd help support my work.


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